Harry Potter and The Vanishing Carnival
by wandsonly
Summary: Harry pulled out his wand to unlock the front door as he reached it, panting only slightly. He thought himself rather fit, generally, but writing didn't do much for the physique. HPDM.


**Disclaimer**: All Harry Potter characters are property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**Harry Potter and the Vanishing Carnival**

* * *

On Thursday morning, Harry Potter woke up in a field and blinked into the face of a goblin.

"Hello," growled the goblin.

"What?" said Harry.

"You're Harry Potter?" growled the goblin.

"I'm—" said Harry. "We're outside."

The goblin frowned at him. "Sit up, Potter!"

Harry sat up. He looked around the field, which was enclosed by oak trees on one side and opened to a grassy hill on the other, just beyond which he could see his fairly large cottage. It was a bit romantic, warm in the weak morning sunlight and thick with wild roses.

Harry shifted uncomfortably. His joggers, currently his only clothing, were wet with dew.

He turned back to the goblin. "How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a carnival," growled the goblin.

Harry stared at him blankly.

The goblin glared back. "A carnival. Rides, games, fattening food, shrieking Muggles."

"I know what a carnival is," said Harry, "but I'm sure I don't have one."

The goblin seemed unimpressed, so Harry made a show of checking his pockets, pulling them inside-out and coming up with nothing but a sugar quill wrapper and a lone Bertie Bott's Bean—vomit flavored.

"See? No carnival," he said.

The goblin gestured towards the hill. "That's your house, isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"There's meant to be a carnival right here," the goblin continued, pointing at the ground, "but it seems to have disappeared."

Harry tried to think of a polite way to tell the goblin that he really didn't care about abandoned carnivals.

"There were still Muggles in it when it vanished."

Harry gasped. "Innocents? Then where the hell is it?"

"That's the point," growled the goblin, "no one knows. It's partially overseen by Gringotts, although its audience is predominantly Muggle, but a wizard owns most of the property and is blaming Gringotts for its disappearance. So here I am," he said bitterly, "investigating."

Harry blinked at him. "They're having a goblin investigate?"

The goblin smiled smugly. "Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"A huge, noisy carnival suddenly vanished from next to your property, and no other wizards live for miles around. You and your husband are the only ones who could have seen something, so you're going to investigate."

"But he, but I," Harry spluttered, "we just moved in!"

"Bully for you," growled the goblin. "You'll meet me at Gringotts on Monday. Nine o'clock sharp. I expect a full report."

"What? I mean, when did it vanish?"

"May fifteenth of this year."

"That's a week _before_ we moved in!"

"Good luck with your investigation," growled the goblin.

"You can't just—" said Harry, but with a crack of magic, the goblin was gone.

Harry flopped back onto the grass, which was drier now and pleasantly scratchy. He knew enough about solving mysteries from his six years with the Aurors, but he hadn't planned any sort of return to action. Then again, he was struggling with his latest novel (which, in all probability, would be his third best seller), so perhaps a change of pace would be nice.

He stood up and headed towards the house. Yes, he decided, he'd disrupt the monotony of constant writing—or of not writing, in his case—with this secret side project. Maybe it'd inspire him to finish his draft.

Harry pulled out his wand to unlock the front door as he reached it, panting only slightly. He thought himself rather fit, generally, but writing didn't do much for the physique.

* * *

On Friday, Harry made a list.

He tore a page from one of his more rubbish manuscripts and nicked a ballpoint pen from his husband's desk drawer, shaking his head in amusement. Nine years together and the only Muggle invention Draco would admit to being fond of was the ballpoint pen. Sure, he used the toaster and watched the telly and had even learned how to drive a car, but he'd only ever sing the praises of the ballpoint pen, and its superiority to even Self-Inking Quills.

Harry sat down to brainstorm. He wasn't sure where to begin, so he wrote Possible Causes of Disappearance at the top of the page and added a no-nonsense line underneath it.

A good time later, he'd come up with:

_Possible Causes of Disappearance_

_ 1. Magic_

Brilliant. He rolled his eyes at his own genius.

About to toss the list out entirely, Harry paused his furious crumpling and considered asking Draco for help. Draco was a Curse-Breaker; he'd definitely have some ideas. Harry set the list down to Vanish it and gnawed at his lip. No, he decided, with a flick of his wand. If he wanted to live up to "truly inspired," as Hermione had described his first book (looking just surprised enough to be insulting), he'd have to work this out for himself. Maybe, if he got desperate, then he'd tell Draco. Maybe.

Tomorrow he'd just have to do some field work.

* * *

On Saturday, Harry did some investigation.

The best thing to do, he figured, was to survey the surrounding area. So mid-morning, he pulled on a pair of boots and tromped down to the clearing the goblin had shown him. Everything looked pretty normal—and pretty boring, actually—so Harry ventured farther into the nearby trees.

The woods were damp, crowded and darker than he'd expected. Harry had gone quite a ways before coming across anything of interest. But a few feet away, across a boulder, he was sure there were scorch marks, which was unusual, as there hadn't been a fire recently. He moved closer and crouched. When he wiped his finger across the rock's surface, it came away covered in ash, and the air smelled faintly smoky.

Harry stood and brushed himself off, then pointed his lit wand at the ground and inspected the space around the boulder. He made a frustrated noise when he didn't find anything, but went ahead and laid frontside-down on the forest floor to get a look at the low foliage, just in case.

He had just tensed to get up (his search was decidedly fruitless) when he felt a hot blast of air, of intense heat, rush from behind him and skim past the top of his head, and fuck, it hurt. Harry grunted and rolled away from it, and looked over his shoulder for the source, coming face to, well, face, with the back end of a fire crab.

"Fuck," he muttered, and scrambled to his feet. He barely missed another blast of flames, although it did manage to catch the edge of his trouser leg.

He hurried backwards and away from the crab and stood pressed against a tree in shock, watching the fire crab crawl under a shrub, its shell gleaming. Just before it was completely out of sight, it turned and gave Harry a menacing snap of its jaws. Lovely. Harry reached up to touch his hair, and winced when he felt the shortened ends, still warm and probably steaming. He sighed, exasperated, and stomped back to the house. What a waste of time.

When Draco came home a few hours later, Harry was in the kitchen, busily whisking whipped cream. They let the house-elf do most of the cooking, of course, but dessert was Harry's specialty. He handed the bowl off to the elf to finish and moved to meet Draco as he hung his things by the door.

"Harry," Draco said softly, squeezing Harry's shoulder and pecking him on the cheek. He looked up at Harry's singed hair and raised his eyebrows. "What happened to you?"

Harry grimaced. "Research happened."

Draco said nothing for a moment, reaching up to run his hand through Harry's hair. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," said Harry, "yeah, I'm fine. Just went down to the woods and ran into, er, a fire crab."

"A fire crab, here?" Draco asked, surprised. "That's strange. We should probably report it." He eyed Harry curiously. "What'd you go down to the woods for?"

"I needed to … experience the bogginess." It wasn't a lie, exactly.

Draco laughed. "All right," he said, "the bogginess. As long as you're uninjured."

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Good." He squeezed Harry's arm again, then grinned suddenly. "Now I can take the piss."

* * *

On Sunday afternoon, Harry caved.

By tea time, he felt resentful of the entire situation and was admittedly getting rather desperate—his meeting with the goblin was the next morning, after all. He was seated at the kitchen table with his laptop, and Draco was across from him, munching a biscuit and reading the Prophet.

Harry cleared his throat. "Draco?"

Draco didn't look up. "Yes, dear."

"Have you ever been to a carnival?"

"No." He turned a rustling page. "Why? Do you want to go?"

Harry shrugged. "Maybe—I've never been. But I was wondering if there's one nearby."

"I don't know about wizarding ones, but there's a Muggle carnival just over the hill."

"There is?" Harry didn't bother to hide his astonishment. If Draco was, well, the culprit, well. "I've never seen it."

"I should hope not," Draco said, looking displeased with something in the paper. "It was garish and ridiculous and deafening at all hours—you could hear it from up here—so, the day before I showed you the house, I put a few modified Charms over it so that we wouldn't have to deal with it. As magical beings, we can't see or hear it unless I lift the Charms, but the Muggles can come and go as they please."

Harry gaped for a moment, then swallowed thickly. "You did that? And it's just—wow."

Draco finally looked up. "Did you think I'd Vanished it or something?"

"Erm," said Harry, "something like that."

**End**

* * *

A/N:Originally Harry pulled a Fizzing Whizzbees wrapper out of his pocket, but then I did some research and was reminded that Harry vowed not to eat them after he found out they may contain dried billywig stings, the righteous prick.


End file.
